It’s not as though I asked for a gun in response to the fact that the East End Rapist (who as far as I know has not been caught) was out there climbing through windows and committing rapes. I had wanted a pistol to shoot since I was a kid, but I had to wait until I was 21 to legally get one. When I got it, I also considered the fact that it could be very useful for self defense, and I learned how to properly do that and got my concealed firearms license.
Picking up something other than my gun when $crimina_element was in my home didn’t even cross my mind. I went with the belief that this person was in my home and constituted a risk to my life. At that point, I was willing to do whatever it took to prevent the guy from killing or raping me, even if it meant shooting him. Had he taken one more step forward after I drew on him, he would have been carried out in a body bag.
And again it’s not that I think using a bat or a broomstick or even a frying pan is bad. It’s that I think my own personal odds are best with a gun.
Fair enough. But let’s look at attitude–are you willing to concede that had you been born and raised in Canada, lived in Canada your whole life, and thus had the Canadian attitude towards gun ownership and usage, that you might believe differently?
Heck, if I was an American, born and raised in the USA, and still living there, I might well believe as you do. Similarly, I believe that had you grown up and still live in a society (Canada, for instance) that takes a different attitude towards gun ownership and usage, you might feel differently than you currently do.
We’re products of our upbringing, our culture, our history. I know there are many attitudes that our peoples share, but there are some on which we differ, and this seems to be one of the latter. While I see nothing wrong with guns for sporting use, I don’t know any legal gun owner in Canada who, when it comes to home security, feels that their “own personal odds are best with a gun.” You feel differently, and that’s okay. I might change my tune if I was in the US; you might change yours if you were in Canada.
We’re not really debating here, catsix, but I think it is interesting that we seem to be doing a good job of illustrating our countries’ respective attitudes with this dialogue.
I think that I would indeed view guns differently had I been raised in a different family in a different part of the US where a gun of any kind was seen as something other than a tool, and where the only people who had them were criminals.
I’m quite sure that my attitude about firearms is a product of my environment, which just so happened to be small-town Pennsylvania where everybody had all kinds of guns and there was relatively no crime (in the 18 years I lived in my home town, there was only one shooting, and no one was even wounded). I learned from a very young age how to handle firearms safely, how to take care of them, and how to shoot. Where I come from, yes, the natural thing is to view a gun as a tool which can be used for a variety of purposes, self defense included.
I’m sure that it’s different where you’re from, thus you have a different attitude regarding firearms.
It doesn’t make either of us more right than the other. We are just different, and as it goes, different strokes. And also Spoons, this is one of the most pleasant firearms conversations I have had in a very long time, and probably ever had with someone who has a different viewpoint about them than myself.
For the record, I live in Canada, and my wife has a very nice 9mm handgun (Colt Combat Commander) for personal defense. We have several weapons in this house. I personally know a half dozen people who own handguns.
Oh, and the official government figures on gun ownership are not to be trusted. They have been lowering the ‘official’ figure to avoid showing the scope of civil disobedience against the national gun registry. Millions of people have refused to register their guns, making them all criminals. Some have accused the government of underestimating gun ownership to make it seem like only a few extremists are holding out against the registry.
About 5 million long guns have been registered in Canada. Before the registry came along, estimates for gun ownership in Canada were as high as 25 million, but now the government says that it’s about 7.7 million. That appears to be from a Department of Justice survey which found that 22% of households had at least one firearm. 22% of 35 million is 7.7 million. But that totally ignores multi-firearm households.
I was under the impression that Maryland was a southern state (it’s border with Pennsylvania is the Mason-Dixon line). And while I admit that I goofed in referring to Indianapolis and Indiana as southern states, their bottom parts are also below the line, for what it’s worth. Anyway, the climate/southern culture argument still stands regardless.
I’m unsure how a country with only about 32 million people could possibly have 35 million households. Obviously, the number of households is less than the number of people.
While I could believe there are more than 7.7 million firearms, the truth may not be as high as 25, either. I don’t own any firearms (I’m not opposed to them, I just don’t really have a reason to, and they’re expensive.) I know few people who do, and in most cases where a firearm is owned, it’s just the one.
I don’t think there’s 25 million either. Claims ‘as high as’ 25 million probably means the 25 million claim came from some organization with an axe to grind.
But it does seem like the government’s 7.7 million claim comes from that 22% of households number. I think they just fudged it.
The thing is, there is really no way to know, because until recently there was no registration requirement for long guns. I have personally purchased four or five .22 rifles in my life, long before the gun registry came into effect. One I left on my grandfather’s farm, in a rack with about six other guns. I have no idea what happened to it. Another was borrowed by my brother and never returned. One was given as a gift to a friend. One I still have. Only the one I still have was ever registered by me. I’m sure there are plenty of stories like that. Lots of widows who’s husbands died, and who have a couple of his rifles in a box somewhere in their basement. I even know a WWII vet who has an entire case full of ‘trophy’ weapons he brought back from the war, including a presumably working submachine gun. A Mauser pistol, and a cool little officer’s boot gun in a caliber that isn’t even available any more.
He died about 10 years ago, and his wife locked them all in a trunk and put them in the attic. I’ll bet they are still there, and I’ll bet they’ve never been registered.
There are a LOT of guns in Canada, especially in the prairies. I never met a farmer who didn’t have at least one gun, and most of them have a .22 for varmints, a shotgun, and usually a high powered rifle or two for hunting.
One thing I will say, though, is that handguns are much less common. Probably because they’ve been heavily regulated for decades. But I read recently that as many as half of all handguns in Canada may be unregistered, and even the government admits that they can no longer account for over 100,000 handguns.
Which was my original point! …and also the point that Moore was trying to make with his movie. Crime and murder is not about guns, or any other inanimate object.
Once you factor out demographics(differences in races, ethnic origins, population densities, climate, etc) the differences in crime/murder rates between Canada and the United States are negligable, with plenty of entire states in the United States having lower crime/murder rates than many Canadian provinces. In fact, most American states have lower crime murder rates than the Yukon.
Even within the United States, gun laws and gun ownership has little correlation with crime, or even a negative relationship. North Dakota has the highest percentage of gun ownership in the United States and the lowest crime murdrer rate, Washington DC has the lowest gunowership and the highest crime/murder rate.
Canadian born citizens who come to visit or even to permanently live in the United States as resident aliens do not go on a crime/murder spree just because they are no longer restricted by those strict Canadian gun laws.
For anyone to say that Canadians do not commit crimes/murders just because of the Canadian gun laws, are insulting Canadians.
i just saw the movie too… i oughtta right to michael moore. i guess his budget must be really low, cuz he gave a very biased picture of Canada by only featuring Sarnia, Windsor and Toronto.
Anyways, im not a history major, so please, all those ppl that try to get real serious about procedures of proving something, be quiet. As i was about to say, i think it is because America’s history with guns has been idolized and praised. The most famous of the wars ( The WW’s) are advertised as America saving the day. The Civil War brought change. Guns = good.
Hitler killed 6 million. In Germany, guns = bad. ( hope everyone agrees) …and so forth.
Back to Canada…they didn’t revolt against the British Empire to the scale that America did. IF blood has anything to do with it…Canadians were never ones to start a fight. By the way, im Canadian
You are right, although those 3 cities give a pretty good picture of urban Ontario, and also a good picture of what kind of people actually control the political power in Canada, and what Canadians make the gun laws. Doesnt Toronto have like 1/7th of all Canadians in just one city? Toronto is a huge voting block in Canadian law.
My friends in northwest Sascachuan have nothing much in common with Torontoites, and cant understand the national laws in Canada.
Toronto has roughly as many votes as it should have, given its population. (Actually, it, and Ontario, are slightly under-represented in Parliament.) I’m not quite certain how 1/7th of the country can outvote the other 6/7ths.
I’m amused by the incredible misinformation about basic Canadian geography and demographics (and name spelling) that Susanann is throwing around, particularly her atempts to weed out Canadians who live close to the U.S. border and provinces that share borders with U.S. states. Uh, I think that describes the vast majority of Canadians and seven out of ten provinces.
As for comparing Quebec and New York population densities, I should point out that Quebec is larger than Alaska, the biggest U.S. state, and over twelve times larger than New York state. In fact, since the recent division of the Northwest Territories, Quebec is the largest political subdivision in the Western Hemisphere, beaten worldwide only by the Australian states of Queensland and Western Australia (although Australia is smaller than Canada, it has fewer internal divisions).
If you’re going to cherry-pick your arguments in an attempt to mislead people, at least try to make it less obvious. Put some effort into it.
What are you trying to prove, anyway? I lost track.
Anyhoo, my home city of Montreal is not immune to the crazy person going on a shooting spree (including two major school shootings in 1989 and 1992, although neither was by a disgruntled teenager) but overall, my city has fewer murders than any American city of comparable size. Got any cherry-picked facts to challenge that?
Nunavut’s area is approximately 1,900,000 square kilometres, according to this site. So it looks like Nunavut is bigger than Quebec.
Bryan is right though about the size of the Australian states, which surprised me. (Not that Bryan was right, but the actual information. ) According to this Commonwealth website, Western Australia’s area is 2,529,875 square kilometres, while Queensland’s is 1,730,648 square kilometres.
And, if Susanann is still around, this quote from the Quebec site may help her to understand the criticism that’s been levelled at her usage of Quebec’s population density:
Given this extremely uneven population distribution, simply using the overall population density is completely useless in dealing with the complex relationship between population density and gun use.
) According to this